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Kelly Ayotte Announces Run for Governor in New Hampshire
The former senator entered the race after Gov. Chris Sununu, a fellow Republican, said last week that he would not run again.Former Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, entered the race for governor of New Hampshire on Monday, following Gov. Chris Sununu’s announcement last week that he would not run again for office in 2024.“I’m running for governor because New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts — from becoming something we are not,” Ms. Ayotte wrote in her campaign announcement. Maura Healey, a Democrat, flipped the Massachusetts governor’s office last year after Charlie Baker declined to run again. Both Mr. Baker and Mr. Sununu are popular moderate Republicans in their states.Ms. Ayotte, a former attorney general in New Hampshire, was ousted from her Senate seat in 2016 by Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who had previously served as a popular governor of the state.Ms. Ayotte’s candidacy for governor comes at a time when the state is receiving renewed attention from Republican presidential hopefuls, many of whom have repeatedly traveled to the state to court voters who will be among the first to go to the polls in the G.O.P. primary.Ms. Ayotte is expected to garner widespread support among Republicans in the state, in a race that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted to a tossup, from solid-Republican, after Mr. Sununu said he would not run again. Chuck Morse, the former president of New Hampshire’s state senate who lost the G.O.P. Senate primary in the race to face Ms. Hassan last year, entered the race almost immediately after Mr. Sununu’s announcement.Two Democrats in the state — Cinde Warmington, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Joyce Craig, the mayor of Manchester — announced their candidacies ahead of Mr. Sununu’s declaration.Ms. Ayotte faced a tough re-election campaign in 2016 even as Republicans gained power nationally. She served only one term in the Senate.Though New Hampshire has had several recent statewide officials that are Republicans, the state has leaned blue during presidential elections, supporting Democrats in the last five.Alongside her announcement, Ms. Ayotte rolled out a lengthy list of endorsements from dozens of Republicans across the state, who rallied around her candidacy.But national Democrats were quick to criticize the former Senator and indicated that they plan to make abortion protections central in the race.“Kelly Ayotte has spent her career working to stack the deck against New Hampshire’s working families and attacking their most fundamental freedoms — even leading the charge for a national abortion ban — which is why New Hampshire voters retired her seven years ago after a single term in the Senate,” wrote Izzi Levy, the deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association.In her statement on Monday, Ms. Ayotte said she would seek to tackle crime by “standing up for our law enforcement officers” and would aim to “protect and strengthen New Hampshire’s economic advantage.”She also signaled that she would lean into cultural issues motivating the Republican base, writing that she would “stand with parents, not bureaucrats, when it comes to deciding what is best for our children.” More
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Chris Sununu Won’t Run for Re-Election as Governor of New Hampshire
The decision by Mr. Sununu, a moderate Republican, sets up a competitive race next year to lead a battleground state, and Democrats will be eager to take advantage.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican, said on Wednesday that he would not run for re-election in 2024, opening up a seat in a battleground state that Democrats will be eager to take.Mr. Sununu made the announcement in an email to supporters.“This was no easy decision as I truly love serving as governor,” he wrote. “Public service should never be a career, and the time is right for another Republican to lead our great state.”Almost immediately, Chuck Morse, a Republican who served as president of the New Hampshire Senate and lost a primary for U.S. Senate last year, announced that he would run for the Republican nomination to fill the seat — praising Mr. Sununu’s economic policies and saying he was running “to build on those successes.” Another Republican, former Senator Kelly Ayotte, also hinted that she might jump into the race.Two Democrats — Cinde Warmington, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Joyce Craig, the mayor of Manchester — had already begun campaigns before Mr. Sununu bowed out.The vacancy will be a big opportunity for the Democratic Party, which has won the last five presidential elections in New Hampshire and holds both of the state’s Senate seats.Like some other Northeastern states, New Hampshire has often voted for Republicans for state offices despite leaning blue in national elections. But Democrats flipped two such governorships last year — in Maryland and Massachusetts — after popular, moderate Republicans in the same mold as Mr. Sununu retired.“No matter which MAGA candidate becomes the nominee, the D.G.A. is eager to hold them accountable to flip this seat and elect a new Democratic governor who will at long last fix the biggest issues impacting working families,” the Democratic Governors Association said in a statement.Mr. Sununu, 48, is serving his fourth two-year term as governor, having been re-elected last year by more than 15 percentage points. He recently decided against two opportunities to run for higher office: He declined to run in last year’s Senate race, and for president in 2024. His next steps are unclear. More
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Trump Lashes Out at Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa
The former president snubbed one influential Iowa leader and attacked another, testing his immunity to traditional political pitfalls in a crucial state.Iowa may be the most important state on Donald J. Trump’s early 2024 political calendar, but he hasn’t been making many friends there lately.He lashed out at Iowa’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and then his campaign informed one of the state’s politically influential evangelical leaders, Bob Vander Plaats, that the former president would skip a gathering of presidential candidates this week in Des Moines.The back-to-back moves on Monday — which the campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida labeled a “snub of Iowa conservatives” in an email on Tuesday — show the extent to which Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, acts as if he is immune to traditional political pitfalls while he is also under indictment and his rivals are seeking to capitalize on some voters’ fatigue with his antics.“With Trump’s personality, I feel he thinks he owns Iowa,” said Steve Boender, a board member for the Family Leader, the conservative Christian group organizing the event on Friday that Mr. Trump is skipping. “And I’m not sure he does.”“I think Trump’s negativity is hurting things a little bit,” added Mr. Boender, who remains unaligned for 2024.It is not surprising that Mr. Trump will skip the Family Leader gathering. He has generally avoided these “cattle call” events, which feature all the candidates, as advisers see such settings as lowering him to the level of his far-behind opponents. In addition, Mr. Vander Plaats has made no secret of his desire to move past Mr. Trump, including traveling to Tallahassee to have lunch with Mr. DeSantis at the governor’s mansion.“I think there’s no doubt, most likely, I will not endorse him,” Mr. Vander Plaats said of Mr. Trump. “So he believes if he shows up and I don’t endorse him that will make him look weak.”But as a result, he said, Mr. Trump was missing out on speaking to an estimated audience of 2,000, and “many of those people still love him dearly.”Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa, said he would most likely not endorse Mr. Trump in 2024. Steve Hebert for The New York TimesOver the weekend, The New York Times reported on the various ways Ms. Reynolds has appeared cozy with Mr. DeSantis, to the growing frustration of Mr. Trump, who appointed her predecessor to an ambassadorship. He wants credit for her ascent and career; she won re-election in a landslide last year. He erupted in public on Monday.“I opened up the Governor position for Kim Reynolds, & when she fell behind, I ENDORSED her, did big Rallies, & she won,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to her 2018 race. “Now, she wants to remain ‘NEUTRAL.’ I don’t invite her to events!”Ms. Reynolds’s office declined to comment. Mr. DeSantis quickly came to her defense on Twitter, saying she is “a strong leader who knows how to ignore the chirping and get it done.”Mr. Trump’s remark spurred some backlash from Iowans who support Ms. Reynolds, including Cody Hoefert, who served as co-chair of the Iowa Republican Party from 2014 to 2021.“It was a continuation of a series of unforced errors by the former president,” Mr. Hoefert said, also citing Mr. Trump’s comments opposing a six-week abortion ban.Ms. Reynolds has called the Iowa Legislature into a special session this week to pass a six-week ban after a previous effort was blocked by the state’s top court. Mr. Trump has said so strict a ban — when many women don’t even know they are pregnant — is “too harsh.”Mr. Hoefert said his break with Mr. Trump — during whose presidency he remained a loyal party officer — was not because of other allegiances.“This was not, ‘I’m going to attack Trump because I’m supporting X candidate,’” he said. “It’s because I’m tired of the former president making everything about himself and attacking his friends and potential supporters and other Republicans who are doing great conservative things over what seems like a personal vendetta.”Republicans opposed to Mr. Trump’s leading the party again predicted that the attacks would play poorly with voters.“He’s shown his penchant for self-destructive behavior, and it’s one of those things that I think voters notice,” said David Kochel, a longtime Republican operative from Iowa who has advised Ms. Reynolds. “Kim Reynolds is very popular in Iowa. She hasn’t attacked Trump. She won’t — she’s told everyone she’ll go to their events, and the fact that he has such an ego he assumes everyone has to endorse him. That’s not going to happen in these early states.”Brett Barker, the chair of the Story County Republican Party in Iowa, saw it as a needless battle. “I don’t think it’s helpful to pick fights with sitting governors who are really popular in their home states,” he said, before adding: “I don’t know how harmful it’s going to be in the big picture.”Mr. Trump’s attacks on Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, whose loyalty Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Mr. Trump have been battling for, could have political consequences in the state, according to some Republican strategists.Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesA person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to speak publicly acknowledged that his attack on Ms. Reynolds was not part of a scripted plan, but questioned whether it would actually erode his standing, despite predictions of political fallout. His team believes he has enough support among Iowans to counteract elected officials’ views.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, cited a “scheduling conflict” as his reason for missing the Family Leadership Summit, and noted that Mr. Trump would be back in Iowa next week. That visit will be for a Trump town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.“The president will be in Florida this weekend headlining the premier national young voter conference with Turning Point Action conference while DeSantis is nowhere to be found,” Mr. Cheung said of an event expected to draw a more pro-Trump crowd.The Family Leader event — which is expected to feature Mr. DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Vivek Ramaswamy, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas — is the second major conservative gathering in two months that Mr. Trump is bypassing.Mr. Vander Plaats said that “half the battle” in Iowa was showing up, and that Mr. Trump had fallen short so far on that score.“Iowa is tailor-made for him to get beat here,” he said. “And to the contrary, if he wins here, I’m not sure there’s any way to stop him from being the nominee.” More
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Trump and DeSantis Are Battling for Iowa Voters. And for Its Governor, Too.
When Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, stopped by a donor retreat that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida held last year, no one paid it much mind.When she sat earlier this year with Mr. DeSantis onstage, at another donor gathering down the road from Donald J. Trump’s residence, people began to notice. When she glowingly appeared with Mr. DeSantis not once, not twice, but at all three of his first visits to her state this year, eyebrows arched. And by the time Ms. Reynolds appeared on Thursday alongside Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, alarms inside the Trump headquarters were blaring.Ms. Reynolds has said — including privately, to Mr. Trump — that she does not plan to formally endorse a candidate in the presidential race, in keeping with a tradition that the Iowa governor stays on the sidelines, keeping the playing field level for the first G.O.P. nominating contest. But through her words and deeds, Ms. Reynolds seems to be softening the ground in Iowa for Mr. DeSantis, appearing to try to create the conditions for an opening for him to take on Mr. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, Iowa is where his allies acknowledge he must first halt Mr. Trump’s momentum to prevent him from steam-rolling his way to a third consecutive G.O.P. nomination. For Mr. Trump, it is where he hopes to snuff out his challengers’ candidacies, and win where he did not in 2016.And there is no politician in Iowa with greater sway than Ms. Reynolds, 63, who has overseen her party’s swelling state legislative majorities with an approval rating among Republicans near 90 percent. Republicans say she can command attention and shape the landscape even without making a formal endorsement.“I mean I think Kim could be considered for just about anything that a president would pick,” Mr. DeSantis said, when asked by a television interviewer if he’d consider Ms. Reynolds for a potential cabinet post.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMs. Reynolds has appeared alongside other candidates — including Mr. Trump, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — but the warmth of her embrace of Mr. DeSantis has become conspicuous. It has been the subject of internal Trump campaign discussions — it has not escaped their notice that one of her senior political advisers, Ryan Koopmans, is also a top DeSantis super PAC adviser — and even public fulminations from the former president.“I hate to say it, without me, you know, she was not going to win, you know that, right?” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Reynolds when he campaigned in Iowa in June.The Republican crowd, notably, did not applaud that off-key remark, which came only months after Ms. Reynolds had romped to re-election, carrying 95 of the state’s 99 counties. But the claim spoke to the former president’s self-centered view of the world: That it was his appointment of her predecessor, Terry Branstad, as his ambassador to China that cleared the way for Ms. Reynolds, then Mr. Branstad’s lieutenant governor, to take the state’s top job.Ms. Reynolds is said to have tired of Mr. Trump, and she reacted with disbelief to his comment that she owed him her governorship, according to people familiar with her thinking and her response. Still, she sided with Mr. Trump after his most recent indictment, lashing out at the Biden administration and saying it was a “sad day for America.”The two do have a shared history: Ms. Reynolds narrowly won a full term in 2018 with only 50.3 percent of the vote after Mr. Trump held a late rally for her, hailing her as “someone who has become a real star in the Republican Party.” More recently, however, Mr. Trump has been privately complaining about Ms. Reynolds and other prominent Republicans, who he feels owe him their endorsements because of his past support.Before Mr. Trump’s latest visit to Iowa on Friday, a behind-the-scenes standoff played out for days over whether Ms. Reynolds would join him. Ms. Reynolds has said she will make an effort to appear with whomever invites her, but an aide said she had not actually been invited. The Trump team sees her as having a standing invitation. Ultimately, she did not attend.The relationship with Mr. DeSantis, who has privately courted Ms. Reynolds for many months, has been strikingly different.He calls her Kim.She calls him Ron.They banter with a degree of familiarity and friendship that Mr. DeSantis rarely flashes with other politicians. People who know them say they forged a bond during the coronavirus pandemic, as two governors who pressed to open their states over the warnings of some public health officials. They sat down for a private dinner in March, on his first visit to Iowa this year, according to two people briefed on the meal, and in 2022 Mr. DeSantis called Ms. Reynolds to offer his encouragement ahead of her State of the Union response.When Mr. DeSantis was asked by a local television interviewer on his first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate if he’d consider Ms. Reynolds for a potential cabinet post, he offered a surprisingly expansive answer, suggestive of something even more lofty: “I mean I think Kim could be considered for just about anything that a president would pick.”At times, she has had the look of a running mate.Appearing with Mr. DeSantis at three of his four visits to Iowa this year, and now with his wife as well, Ms. Reynolds has extolled Florida’s achievements under his leadership and connected his state’s successes to Iowa’s. The two lavish compliments on each other, and their talking points echo in perfect harmony.He says Florida is “the Iowa of the Southeast.” She says Iowa is “the Florida of the North.”In her introduction at his kickoff event, she made a point of specifically praising Mr. DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban, which Mr. Trump has criticized.“He proudly signed a law that makes it illegal to stop a baby’s beating heart — the same heartbeat bill that I was proud to sign,” she said of Mr. DeSantis.Some Iowa Republicans said Ms. Reynolds is simply being a gracious host.“She’s very popular but I don’t think she’s playing favorites,” said Steve Scheffler, one of the state’s Republican National Committee members and the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. “People read way too much into this.”Mr. Trump has been privately complaining about Ms. Reynolds and other prominent Republicans, who he feels owe him their endorsements because of his past support. Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Trump advisers have snickered privately about her having neutrality-in-name-only. “She is quote unquote neutral,” said a person close to Mr. Trump, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the team’s thinking, which is that Ms. Reynolds will do whatever she can to help Mr. DeSantis short of endorsing him.The Washington bureau chief for Breitbart News, Matthew Boyle, who is known for his close relationship with the former president, glaringly left Ms. Reynolds off his recent list of 14 Republicans Mr. Trump could pick as his 2024 running mate.Mr. Trump has some well-placed allies in Iowa — the state party chairman’s son, who is in the legislature, is among his paid advisers — and he is seeking more. On his June visit to the state, he invited a small group of prominent Republican officials whose endorsements are still up for grabs out for dinner at a steakhouse in downtown Des Moines, among them the state’s attorney general, according to people who attended the meal.In an interview, Mr. Branstad, the former Iowa governor, described the Trump-Reynolds relationship as “cordial,” praised Ms. Reynolds as a popular and effective governor and said her formal neutrality was good for all Iowans. He urged the former president to overcome his irritation.“Trump has got to get over it,” Mr. Branstad said. “He’s got to get over the jealousy and resentment and focus on the future. You win elections by focusing on the future and not the past.”There has been no recent independent polling in Iowa. In national surveys, Mr. Trump has led Mr. DeSantis by a wide margin.Ms. Reynolds is not just the governor of Iowa: She also presides over the Republican Governors Association, the nationwide campaign arm for Republicans seeking governorships. Both her elected G.O.P. counterparts leading the Senate and House campaign arms have already endorsed Mr. Trump.Yet like other prominent Iowa elected officials, Ms. Reynolds has made it clear that her primary goal is to ensure that Iowa keeps its “first in the nation” status. At a college-football game last fall in Iowa, Ms. Reynolds was in a V.I.P. box mingling with members of the state’s congressional delegation as they discussed the importance of staying “neutral” to protect Iowa’s enviable position at the top of the Republican voting calendar, according to a person present for the conversation (Democrats took away the state’s leadoff spot in 2024).“We aren’t going to get involved in campaigns, because we want everybody to feel welcome in Iowa,” Senator Chuck Grassley, the 89-year-old Republican senior statesman, said in an interview. “And if the governor were to back somebody, that may discourage other people from coming. Same way for me.”Casey DeSantis traveled to Iowa on Thursday, making her first solo appearance in her husband’s presidential campaign at an event with Ms. Reynolds.Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesBut there is some burbling frustration with Mr. Trump inside the delegation.Last month, Mr. Trump skipped the signature “Roast and Ride” event organized by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. His campaign had expressed interest in sending videotaped remarks, and Ms. Ernst’s operation then rented large screens for the purpose of showing them, but he never sent a video — leaving Ms. Ernst’s team without a recording, and the cost of the equipment to cover, according to five people briefed on the incident.Ms. Ernst’s team had planned on using the chance to win a motorcycle helmet signed by all of the Republican candidates as a lure to sell tickets to the “Roast and Ride.” They sent the helmet to Mr. Trump, who returned it later than expected and had added the numbers “45” and “47,” signaling he would be the 47th president, the role everyone else is also running for, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. They never used the helmet.In March of this year, Ms. Reynolds did introduce Mr. Trump at an event. In a private meeting during that same trip, Ms. Reynolds stressed to Mr. Trump that her focus was on maintaining Iowa’s place as the first state in the nation on the campaign calendar, according to a person familiar with what took place but who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Mr. Trump responded by telling her that he was the one who had protected the caucuses’ leadoff position, as president. (The Iowa caucuses have begun the nominating process since the 1970s.)At their joint event on Thursday, Ms. Reynolds and Ms. DeSantis bantered onstage and even exchanged a high-five.“I am a woman on a mission,” Ms. Reynolds said at one point, “and I think you are a woman on a mission, too.”Lisa Lerer More
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Ron DeSantis Helicopter Photo Spurs Questions About Campaign Ethics
It’s not the first time that the Florida governor has faced accusations of inappropriately blurring the lines between his official duties and his presidential campaign.It was a photo op intended to turbocharge Republican voters, one showing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posing in front of a helicopter on Sunday at the southern border in Texas.But the display is creating an unwanted spotlight for Mr. DeSantis: The helicopter is funded by Texas taxpayers, raising questions about the political nature of the flight and its cost.Federal law requires presidential candidates to pay the fair-market rate for noncommercial air travel and reimburse providers of flights. In this case, the Texas Department of Public Safety owns the 2008 Eurocopter, according to a Federal Aviation Administration database of aircraft tail numbers.Additionally, ethics rules in Texas bar officials there from using state resources in support of political campaigns.Mr. DeSantis’s office suggested that he was visiting the border in a dual capacity, as both governor and presidential candidate, but his official schedule as governor omitted mention of it. Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis in the governor’s office, referred questions on Wednesday about the helicopter flight to the Texas Department of Public Safety.That agency said Mr. DeSantis was briefed during his visit about joint immigration enforcement activities between Florida and Texas at the border, part of a program known as Operation Lone Star.“The briefing included an aerial tour which was provided by D.P.S. in order to give Gov. DeSantis a clearer understanding of how Florida’s resources are being utilized along our southern border and see the challenges first hand,” Ericka Miller, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in an email on Wednesday. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign shared the helicopter photo on Twitter on Monday, the same day that he proposed a series of hard-right immigration policies in a campaign speech in Eagle Pass, a small Texas border city.Reflecting the split nature of his duties, Mr. DeSantis on Sunday wore a short-sleeve white shirt that said “Governor Ron DeSantis” on the right and “DeSantis for President” on the left.Mr. DeSantis’s use of the taxpayer-funded helicopter was first reported by The Daily Beast, which also noted that he took a boat tour of the Rio Grande as part of his visit. A Fox News reporter accompanied him by air and by water.That boat is owned by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, The New York Times confirmed. The state agency had already deployed the vessel there through a mutual-aid arrangement, and as part of the Operation Lone Star program.Mr. Redfern, in a statement, challenged that there was anything inappropriate about Mr. DeSantis’s ride on the Florida taxpayer-owned boat.“Participating in a routine patrol with F.W.C. is not outside the purview of the governor’s job as the state’s chief executive,” he said.Myles Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, said in an email on Wednesday that he was not able to comment about specific candidates or their activities. But he pointed out that federal campaign finance rules require candidates to reimburse federal, state or local government entities when using aircraft owned by them to campaign.Political committees must also pay back costs associated with others means of transportation, including boat travel.Mr. DeSantis has previously faced accusations that he is inappropriately blurring the lines between his official duties and his campaign.As Mr. DeSantis prepared to sign Florida’s record-breaking budget earlier this month, lobbyists and state lawmakers said the governor’s staff called them seeking either campaign contributions or political endorsements — outreach that would normally be made by members of Mr. DeSantis’s campaign. The conversations left the lobbyists and lawmakers afraid that Mr. DeSantis would veto their projects from the budget if they did not comply, they said.And when Mr. DeSantis signed the budget, he vetoed several projects sponsored by state Senator Joe Gruters, a Republican who has endorsed former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. Mr. Gruters accused the governor of retribution, calling him “meanspirited” and saying he had chosen to “punish ordinary Floridians” because of a political disagreement.The governor’s office denied that the vetoes were political. And at a news conference in Tampa last week, Mr. DeSantis said there was nothing wrong with aides in his office supporting his campaign in their “spare time.”But Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, filed state ethics and elections complaints against three top staffers in the governor’s office. “Any reasonable person could infer from the reporting that our governor was holding the state budget hostage in exchange for political endorsements and donations — actions that are both unethical and illegal,” Ms. Fried said in a statement.Earlier this year, Mr. DeSantis also signed a bill shielding his travel records from public disclosure, preventing an accounting of the taxpayer funds being used to cover security and other costs during his campaign trips. More
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With Migrant Flights, Ron DeSantis Shows Stoking Outrage Is the Point
The flights to California illustrate the broader bet Gov. Ron DeSantis has made that the animating energy in the G.O.P. has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism.Ron DeSantis’s decision to send migrants from near the Mexico border to the capital city of California is at first glance the latest in a series of escalating clashes between the Florida governor and his Democratic counterpart, Gavin Newsom.But the performative gambit in the early days of Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 presidential run is better understood as an opening bid to prove to Republican primary voters that he can be just as much a provocateur, and every bit as incendiary, as former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. DeSantis, the flights illustrate the broader bet he has made that the animating energy in the Republican Party today has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism. And that in this new era, nothing is more fundamental than picking fights and making the right enemies, whether it’s the migrants who have slogged sometimes thousands of miles to slip through the border, the news media or the chief executive of the biggest blue state on the map.Mr. DeSantis has used this playbook before. He ordered up flights from the Texas border last year to the symbolically liberal hamlet of Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that drew exactly the outrage he sought. Those flights are now a staple of his stump speech, usually to cheers from the crowd. His allies in the Florida Legislature earmarked $12 million of taxpayer money into the state budget this year for just this purpose.“The easiest way to prove one’s tribal loyalty in 2020s America is by theatrically hating the other tribe,” said Russell Moore, the editor in chief of Christianity Today and the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.A private charter plane that carried more than a dozen migrants, at Florida’s direction, at a Sacramento airport on Monday.Andri Tambunan for The New York TimesIn recent days, two charter flights orchestrated by the DeSantis administration carried roughly three dozen migrants from a New Mexico airport to Sacramento. The migrants, who are mostly Venezuelan, said they had been recruited from outside a shelter in El Paso, with promises of employment that California officials have said amounted to deception. Mr. Newsom, the California governor who is a potential future presidential contender himself, has suggested that the affair could merit “kidnapping charges,” calling Mr. DeSantis in a tweet a “small, pathetic man.”Mr. Moore said he believed “that migrants and asylum seekers are created in the image of God and shouldn’t be mistreated or treated as political theater for anybody.” But he could also see the more crass calculations that Mr. DeSantis is making in a polarized era where politicians are most clearly defined not by what they’re for, but who they’re against.“The one heresy that no tribe seems to allow is a refusal to hate the other tribe,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. DeSantis, who flew to Arizona on Wednesday for a border event, is not a trailblazer in this regard. It was Mr. Trump who began his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, who promised to “build the wall” and later pitched a Muslim ban, making an “America First” approach to immigration a central theme of the party. And it was Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas who first began busing immigrants to blue cities and states last year (an idea Mr. Trump floated as president in 2018 but never pursued). Mr. DeSantis later one-upped Mr. Abbott’s buses with the dramatic flights to Martha’s Vineyard, which are now the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit.At the demographic and geographic epicenter of Mr. DeSantis’s presidential candidacy is an effort to appeal to deeply conservative evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Republicans’ 2024 nominating contest begins. Evangelical voters helped propel the Iowa victories of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in the last three open contests.Yet the DeSantis campaign and its allies see fighting the left as the fastest way to appeal to those voters rather than overt displays of religiosity. “Christians aren’t looking for a savior to be a president, they already have one,” said one DeSantis adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly to discuss strategy, explaining how Mr. Trump has dominated that voting bloc despite concerns about his moral character.Kevin Madden, who served as a top adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said transporting migrants, however cynical, allowed Mr. DeSantis to agitate all the right people.Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, praying at a campaign stop in Iowa last month.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times“He’s provoking Gavin Newsom,” Mr. Madden said. “He’s provoking the most extreme liberal voices to attack him. He is provoking media voices. And that works to his favor because it endears him to the forces on the right who want to see a clash of political civilizations.”Outrage sells. Campaign contributions have repeatedly surged to the fury merchants on the right, whether the politicians selling the lie that the 2020 election was stolen or the G.O.P. hard-liners who battled Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ascent to the House speakership. An “own the libs” mentality has come to drive, if not define, the right online.On the left, Mr. Newsom has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too. He ran a television advertisement in Florida attacking him last year. He challenged him to a debate. He traveled this spring to the New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution where Mr. DeSantis is engineering a right-wing intellectual takeover. In his personal Twitter account, Mr. Newsom has slammed Mr. DeSantis by name at least 20 times.“I think I’m being generous — ‘small and pathetic’ — very generous,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” broadcast on Wednesday. He accused Mr. DeSantis of using migrants as “pawns,” adding, “He’s just weakness masquerading as strength.”Mr. Newsom’s new PAC has been running a rotation of online fund-raising ads that attack Mr. DeSantis. “In my book, a bully and a coward doesn’t deserve to be the leader of the free world,” Mr. Newsom says of Mr. DeSantis in a video ad that began running on Facebook on Wednesday.Mr. DeSantis’s round-table discussion in Arizona on border security was a government event underwritten by taxpayers, not his campaign. After days of mystery, Mr. DeSantis’s administration took credit for the Sacramento flights on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he did not mention Mr. Newsom by name, though he said “sanctuary jurisdictions” had “incentivized” illegal immigration.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a possible eventual presidential hopeful, has sought to elevate himself through his tussles with Mr. DeSantis, too.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen Mr. DeSantis shifted to pick another fight with President Biden. “I don’t know how you can just sit there and let the country be overrun with millions and millions of people coming illegally,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis has become expert at agitating the right’s boogeymen. He once called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, a “little elf” who needed to be chucked “across the Potomac.” And when Mr. DeSantis’s motives are questioned by reporters, his snapbacks have been quickly packaged and posted on social media in hopes of generating viral hits.If he were to become president, Mr. DeSantis has made plain he would use the White House’s powers to the fullest. He is fond of saying that although he first won the governorship in 2018 with barely 50 percent of the vote, that victory came with 100 percent of the executive authority.As governor, he proudly used the power of the state to overrule local governments, ousting a prosecutor and prohibiting school districts from imposing mask mandates. Such actions are a departure from the limited-government conservatism of yesteryear. His allies say it is a vivid signal to voters that Mr. DeSantis will leverage the powers of government to battle their enemies, at a moment when many Republicans feel that their values and nation are under siege.Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who, two decades ago, served as the top domestic policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, said that “Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave using taxpayer dollars” to fly migrants from one faraway state to another.“DeSantis’s move is part of a growing strain in conservatism, endorsed by younger conservatives, to aggressively use the power and resources of government to achieve — or coerce — policy goals,” Mr. Conda said. “The ‘less government, lower taxes, more freedom’ mantra of conservatism is becoming quaint and old-fashioned, unfortunately.”Shawn Hubler More
